


Brittle Glory

by La Reine Noire (lareinenoire)



Series: The Not So Dead Ladies Club [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Baratheons behaving badly, Bechdel Test Pass, Canonical Disabled Character, F/F, F/M, Fix-It Fic That Isn't, Lady Knights, M/M, Microaggressions, Multi, POV Character of Color, POV Multiple, Racism, Royalty in Compromising Positions, The (Not So) Dead Ladies Club, Uncivil War, Women Being Awesome, lady friendships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-02-03 09:12:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12745350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lareinenoire/pseuds/La%20Reine%20Noire
Summary: Canon Divergence AU. Elia Martell and Lyanna Stark survive Robert’s Rebellion, but there are greater wars to come.





	1. Elia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laughablyunimportant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughablyunimportant/gifts).



> Strictly speaking, this fic exists within the same universe as a fic I wrote two years ago for got_exchange called [False Sorrow’s Eye](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3815260), but it’s intended to stand on its own. It is a commission for the Fandom Trumps Hate charity auction, so it’s safe to assume that political or social allegory is intentional.
> 
> Based on [this timeline](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZsY3lcDDtTdBWp1Gx6mfkdtZT6-Gk0kdTGeSC_Dj7WM/edit#gid=8), the events of this story (after the prologue) begin at approximately the same point as A Game of Thrones.

_Year 297 after the Conquest_

_Year 14 of King Robert, First of his Name_

 

 

The wind whistled sharp and chill through the red peaks, and for what had to be the hundredth time, Elia Martell regretted the seemingly reasonable series of choices that had led her here.

 

The desert would have been a thousand times worse. Rhaenys had chosen the desert and was likely halfway to Yronwood by now. _She’s probably riding one of those awful beasts that can run for days without water and has the temperament to match_. She could even picture her daughter, spear-slender and quick, wrapped in layers of pale sandsilk until nothing of her could be seen but her dark, beautiful eyes. It hadn’t been clear until after her father died, but Elia still remembered the first time she looked at Rhae beneath the blazing Dornish sun and realised her eyes were violet. _The blood of the dragon runs in her veins twice over, and the blood of Mother Rhoyne too_.

 

Rhae would be fine, she reminded herself. She had travelled all over Dorne with her cousins since she was a child. She had the Sword of the Morning, the greatest knight in the realm, to guard her and her brother in King’s Landing. And Rhae was fearless, like her uncle. _Like Lyanna. She gets it from Lyanna as much as she does from Oberyn_. Elia couldn’t refuse her. _Not when she’s on her way into a cage. A golden cage with a crown, but a cage all the same_.

 

Elia opened her eyes and, with great effort, raised her chin.

 

Over the mule’s lazily twitching ears, she could see Lyanna on her grey Northern palfrey, her posture as flawless on horseback as it was dreadful elsewhere. A slender shortsword and a dagger of Valyrian steel were sheathed at her waist, and a small shield hung from her saddle, unmarked save for a subtly embossed border of direwolves and suns.

 

She had yet to use any of these during their journey. They had travelled up the River Wyl by barge, and even trudging along the rocky paths that barely deserved that name, they had encountered not a soul. Whatever bandits had once roamed these lonely rocks had found somewhere else to hide.

 

 _Even the bandits of the Boneway know to shrink from the She-Wolf of Sunspear_ , thought Elia, a brief smile flickering to life before the mule’s next step sent jolts of pain rocking through her. _We have only been on foot for two days. Why does it seem like twenty?_

 

There were no good ways to reach Highgarden from Sunspear—and Elia, like anyone else in Dorne, was normally happy about that fact. But these were anything but normal circumstances. _This is our best chance for peace in the realm. If sacrifices must be made, so be it_. And the journey by sea from Sunspear to Wyl had been as uneventful as Elia could have desired. Aegon might have disagreed, but he had always been prone to seasickness.

 

He had wanted to ride with Rhaenys, Dany, and Oberyn’s girls across the desert, but Elia refused, remembering a phrase her mother had used when talking about the War of the Ninepenny Kings. Her own father, Elia’s grandsire, had sent the three of them—Elia’s mother, Elia, and Oberyn—to court partly to represent Dorne’s interests to the Iron Throne, but mainly for their safety. Doran remained at Salt Shore, and when Elia later asked her mother if she’d feared for him, her mother had replied,

 

“Of course I feared for him. I feared for all of you. But it is a foolish merchant who ventures all her treasure in a single ship. Doran was my heir. You and Oberyn were too young to be without me, but if something had happened, the succession needed to be secure.”

 

Before they left Sunspear, some two weeks earlier, Elia had knelt before the statue of the Mother and, closing her eyes, saw her own mother’s face through the swirls of smoke.

 

“What would you do, Mother?” she whispered. “I was a woman grown when I agreed to wed Rhaegar Targaryen. The mistakes I made were my own, and I have lived with those shadows all these years.” Elia had never been devout, but the hour each day that she spent in the sept on her knees was not about her, nor had she done so before the war. The families of the Dornish soldiers who had perished at the Trident were all given pensions from her household purse, and she had taken any number of servants and attendants from those families, paying them well over the standard sum, as though gold could wash away blood. _We all atone in our own way. Lya has hers, and I have mine_. “I suppose it is fitting that my children should suffer for what we wrought.”

 

Elia’s mother had died almost a year to the day after Elia and the children arrived in Sunspear from King’s Landing, and on every one of those days, the Princess of Dorne had spent the entire afternoon in the Water Gardens. _The children are what matter, Elia. Never forget that_. As they came to know her better, Aegon and Rhaenys would join their granddam, and Elia would silently retreat to give her mother and her children what they had all so desperately craved. She had sworn to Elia on her deathbed that she was happy. At peace. _Would that we all were so_.

 

There was a nightmare Elia still had sometimes, of the corridors of Maegor’s Holdfast stretching before her, dark and endless, twisting upon themselves until they trapped her like a rat in a maze. What that meant, she couldn’t say; unlike Lyanna, her dreams foretold nothing.

 

“Rhaenys would say she isn’t a child. She tells me every day. But I remember being seventeen, Mother. I didn’t know anything.” Elia shivered. “We were prisoners in the Red Keep while men were being burned alive in the throne room. How can I take my children back there? How do I give them to a man who hates them for their father’s crimes?” Never mind that her children had been so young when their father died that they scarcely remembered him. _Robert remembers, and that is all that matters_.

 

She had Jon Arryn’s word of honour that Aegon and Rhaenys would be safe in King’s Landing; however she felt about Robert Baratheon, he was no Aerys the Mad, and he had struck Rhaegar down in pitched battle. Rhaenys insisted she was a woman grown and did not need her mother while Aegon worried for her health, having learned much about the hundreds of stairs and narrow corridors in the Red Keep from Maester Caleotte. Even Doran had asked her if she was certain this was the right decision, and Doran had everything to gain by her absence.

 

The Targaryen ‘shadow court’ in Sunspear had been a blot on relations between Dorne and the Iron Throne since the end of the war. Doran had refused to turn over his sister, or any of the fugitive Targaryens in her care, to King Robert, and it had only been the calming influence of Lord Arryn—and a well-timed rebellion by Balon Greyjoy—that had saved Sunspear from invasion. _If I am gone, and the children with me, Robert’s eye will turn from Dorne_. Doran had children of his own to think of, and a kingdom to rule.

 

“Perhaps I ought to have left years ago, taken them to the Free Cities, but what sort of life is that? I wanted them to grow up in the Water Gardens, to know safety and joy and _family_. And I gambled Dorne’s safety for that.”

 

Her mother would have forgiven her. _For the children_. “I owe it to Doran to make things right, and if I must go back to that cesspit they call a capital to do it, I will.”

 

She lingered in the sept for some time longer, reciting the catechism she now knew as though it were written on her heart. “I ask mercy, O Mother and Maiden, for all the innocents who died for my husband’s sins, for my sins, and those of House Targaryen. I ask protection, O Warrior, for Lyanna Stark, Arthur Dayne, Obara Sand, and Oswell Whent, and for my brother Oberyn. May their blades strike true and their shields hold strong. I ask wisdom, O Crone, for my children, Rhaenys and Aegon, and for Viserys and Daenerys. May your light guide them as they grow. I ask healing, O Smith, for all those whose loved ones died and who live yet to ache for them. For Ash and little Brandon, for Arthur, for Viserys and Daenerys. Make them strong and make them whole again. I ask justice, O Father, for those who have done wrong, the living and the dead.

 

“And I ask for darkness, O Stranger, eternal cold darkness for the soul of Aerys Targaryen, the second of that name. May he know nothing but torment till the end of all days.”

 

By the time she rose to her feet, pins and needles were exploding through her legs, but her heart felt lighter than it had in weeks. Then she heard a sound in the shadows.

 

“Who’s there?” demanded Elia, slipping the small dagger loose from its sheath within her sleeve. “Show yourself, in the name of Dorne and House Martell.”

 

A shadow detached itself from the darkness, moving toward her. For a half-second, as the moonlight spilled across his face, Elia could have been looking at her dead husband, her dreams made sudden and arresting flesh.

 

But the figure moved, and the spell was broken. “Viserys,” she said, cursing the quaver in her voice. “You decided to bid me farewell after all.”

 

“Farewell, traitor.” Whatever resemblance he had to Rhaegar always dissolved as soon as he spoke. _There is more of his father in him every day._ The sweet, if wilful, child she had known in King’s Landing had grown into a petulant man of one-and-twenty with nothing but contempt for his half-Dornish cousins and the court that had harboured him all these years. Her fingers tightened on the dagger’s hilt, its blade still hidden in her sleeve.

 

“You swore an oath to my mother, to your queen!”

 

“To protect you. That was the oath I swore. To keep you and your sister safe.” _I swear it by all the gods that ever were and will be, I will protect them with my life_. “That was what your mother wanted, and I have kept my word all these years.”

 

“Don’t tell me what she wanted,” Viserys hissed. “She was the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and she would have _wanted_ her son on the Iron Throne where he belongs.”

 

Elia could have corrected him. By the Targaryens’ own laws of succession, it was Aegon who was next in line for the throne. Viserys had long ago decided to remember otherwise and Aegon refused to argue with him over a crown he didn’t even want. Had his father been any other man, Elia could have sent her son to the Citadel, knowing he would be happy there for the rest of his days. _But that would please the king far too well_.

 

“Your mother knew it was impossible, Viserys.” With effort, Elia kept her voice even, her words slow and measured. _If Oberyn ruled Dorne, Viserys would already be dead_. And even Doran’s patience had limits—he had already admitted to Elia that he was reconsidering the betrothal between Viserys and his daughter and heiress, Arianne that had been in place since they were children. _He will not have an Aerys married to his daughter, no matter what promises I made._

 

She reached for his hand. “Your father poisoned that well beyond repair. What can you offer the Seven Kingdoms that Robert has not already given them?” When spring came to the land in the wake of the Targaryens’ fall, the septons had called it a sign of the gods’ favour. Elia couldn’t help but wonder—however grumpily—if whatever prophetic nonsense had sent Rhaegar and Lyanna Stark to Dorne _had_ brought back the spring. Not that she could make such remarks in jest to Lyanna; a genuine belief in prophecy was one in a handful of things her late husband and her very alive consort still had in common.

 

“I am the _rightful_ king,” snapped Viserys, jerking back as though her touch burned him.

 

“So the Storm King said to the Conqueror,” Elia replied coldly. “And Harren the Black too. Kings rise and they fall. Robert gave the realm peace after your father tore it apart for his own pleasure.”

 

“The usurper murdered my brother. Or have you forgotten Rhaegar in that Northern whore’s bed?”

 

Elia slapped him. The sound echoed like a crack in the silence of the sept.

 

“Your brother played his part in your family’s fall and he knew it all too well in the end.” Viserys’ eyes had widened as he raised his hand to his reddened cheek. For a moment, he looked like a child again. “And I would say the people of the Seven Kingdoms drink many more toasts to Lyanna Stark than they do to you, Viserys. They remember your father with fear. Hatred. Disgust for the creature he became.”

 

“He was their king, the gods’ anointed,” he protested weakly. “They owed him obedience.”

 

“Not when he was killing them for sport.” When Elia took his hands, he did not protest. “You don’t remember him as he was—you were too young and your mother protected you from the worst of it, but I saw what he did. He would have burned all of King’s Landing to the ground, killed every man, woman and child within those walls, if Jaime hadn’t stopped him.”

 

“If Jaime hadn’t murdered him,” Viserys muttered.

 

“He would have died no matter what,” Elia remarked with a sigh. “If he had succeeded, I would be dead; Rhaenys and Aegon too. You would be…the gods alone know where. You and your sister, on your own. What kind of life would that be?”

 

“I’ll be alone now. You’re even taking Dany from me.” Viserys stepped back. “I’ll never forgive you. Remember that when your precious children marry the usurper’s spawn. I will show no mercy to traitors when I take my throne.”

 

“Viserys.”

 

But he had already vanished into the shadows. Elia turned back to the altar. Though she knelt for hours, the statue offered no answers. Nor did the monotony of the road and the pain that lanced through her at every step.

 

It took her several moments to realise they’d stopped moving, and she could make out Lyanna and Aegon whispering and glancing back toward her. Lyanna slung her arm around Aegon’s shoulders and gave him a quick hug before motioning to Ser Arthur. Elia tried to say something, but her tongue suddenly felt like lead.

 

She slumped forward against the mule’s neck. _I just need to close my eyes for a moment. Just for a moment…_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, this story exists within the same alternate universe as [False Sorrow’s Eye](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3815260), a fic where Elia Martell and Lyanna Stark both survive Robert’s Rebellion.
> 
> The other major event in this universe that does not occur in canon is the death of Tywin Lannister in 290 AC as part of the opening salvo of the Greyjoy Rebellion. In this universe, he is succeeded by his son Jaime, who King Robert discharged from the Kingsguard shortly after his marriage. The official reason is that whole Kingslayer thing.
> 
> Other elements of this AU will be explained along the way, promise.
> 
> Next chapter: Highgarden


	2. Willas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in updating; we had a delightful flood of houseguests (including Winter_of_our_Discontent, yay!). My goal is to add a chapter each week, but I'll be teaching again in January, so that may change. For now, however, should be one per week.

It wasn’t every day that a royal visit was cancelled at the last minute.

 

Willas was certain that, for the five minutes following his lord father’s announcement, the entire castle of Highgarden had ground to a halt—something he hadn’t seen since the day his sister Margaery was born, when a tattered, gasping messenger rode through the gates shouting that they had a new king.

 

Margaery was a few weeks from her fifteenth name day and King Robert, First of his Name, had paid many visits to Highgarden since he took his throne. Afterward, Willas’ mother and grandmother would sigh over the larders, particularly the wine cellar. _One thing I will say_ , Lady Alerie had remarked after the last royal visit, when she didn’t realise he was listening, _at least the previous king didn’t drink us out of house and home and leave half our serving girls with bastards in their bellies_.

 

 _Aye,_ replied Lady Olenna, _he was too busy burning them all to death. I do wonder why we didn’t simply dispense with kings when we dispensed with the Targaryens_. Although his mother laughed, Willas suspected that his grandmother was only half joking.

 

The Tyrells had been stewards of the Reach since the Conqueror’s time and, at least as far as Willas could see, were content to remain such. Lady Olenna, as she frequently reminded them, had lived through enough wars to know that it mattered little who sat the Iron Throne because all the Seven Kingdoms would perish in winter without the Reach.

 

There was a week’s worth of jousts and banquets planned to celebrate Lord Renly Baratheon and Lady Daenerys Targaryen, the first in a series of betrothals meant to signal peace between their Houses once and for all. The opening banquet coincided with the turn of the year, and they had been preparing for months on end to showcase all the beauty of Highgarden for all the Seven Kingdoms. The cellars were filled with wines from across the realm, and the Free Cities, as well as extra barrels of the king’s favoured strongwine (with additional stock in nearby holdfasts, in the event that King Robert had a particular appetite), and the larders stocked to bursting. It was meant to be the greatest tourney of his reign.

 

Only now the king was not coming.

 

Instead, his brother and Master of Laws, Lord Stannis Baratheon, would be arriving with his household—one-third the size of the king’s—in four days’ time. The bridal party from Dorne, three hundred strong, was due to arrive the day before Lord Stannis, and would now be the largest contingent outside House Tyrell itself. _Our worst possibility is a small war. Our best is men of the Reach and Dornishmen attempting to outdrink one another_. And he suspected the latter was overly optimistic.

 

The fields that surrounded Highgarden were already filling with tents as hedge knights, minor lords and their households, and craftsmen arrived from near and far. The highest nobility would stay in Highgarden itself, and descend to the tourney grounds beside the Mander each day. But now an entire wing of the castle would need to be reorganised, and all his mother and grandmother’s work to untangle orders of precedence and petty rivalries would need to be redone. Willas could feel his head begin to spin just thinking about it.

 

“Three hundred Dornishmen in the heart of the Reach. Gods forfend,” muttered Willas’ father Lord Mace as he tucked in a second course of trout caught that morning in the Mander. “If only they’d also changed their minds.”

 

“Why would they?” remarked Lady Alerie with a shrug. “They have everything to gain by this. That snake Elia Martell will have her children on the Iron Throne, whatever it takes. Why would she turn back when she’s winning?”

 

Though the treaty and marriage agreements had been signed three years earlier, the Dornish princess had insisted that Lady Daenerys not travel north until she was at least three and ten, and that the marriage itself not take place until she was at least fifteen. Though Lord Mace had let forth on the foolishness of women, Willas had noticed the look exchanged between his mother and grandmother before they both turned their attention to Margaery, dancing with her ladies on the far side of the room. Neither would ever willingly admit to agreeing with Elia Martell on anything, but this was the closest they would come.

 

“I confess,” said his mother after a moment, “I was not looking forward to hosting a meeting between two people who loathe one another as much as King Robert and Princess Elia.”

 

“One would think their offences might cancel one another out,” said Grandmother with a smirk. “But men will be men, and they cannot abide even the suspicion that they might be losing ground to a woman—and a Dornishwoman at that.”

 

“And instead we are to entertain Lord Stannis,” Lord Mace all but groaned, “the worst-tempered man in all the Seven Kingdoms, gods save us. They say he frowned his way through even Lady Whent’s great tourney at Harrenhal, and he had barely come of age.”

 

The conversation turned to re-allocating guest chambers and altering seating arrangements and Willas allowed his thoughts to drift to pleasanter things. He was to have his pick of no fewer than five of the finest Dornish stallions when the party arrived from Sunspear, a promise from Prince Oberyn Martell himself.

 

While the king’s absence meant that Barristan the Bold and the rest of the Kingsguard would no longer compete, there were still plenty of great fighters for the wagering man, and Willas was content to arrange a secure betting system in exchange for a cut of the profits. The odds on Lord Renly and on Willas’ newly knighted youngest brother Loras were impressive despite their youth, and while Lord Jaime Lannister was not here, several of his younger cousins, who were said to have trained with him, had travelled all the way from Casterly Rock. And there were three from the Dornish party. The legendary Sword of the Morning had not entered the lists since before the war and it was not yet known if he would compete. Prince Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper, had never won a tourney but was the darling of every crowd, even in the Reach. And, of course, there was the She-Wolf.

 

A woman had never won a tourney before—at least not in any herald’s account that Willas had read—but Lyanna Stark had come closest some six years earlier in Lannisport. Though she had paid a grave price for it at the time, she had recovered from her wounds, and the odds on her in the lists and the mêlée were the sort that could make a man’s fortune if she won.

 

The jousting matches would not be announced until the second day of the tourney proper—the first, as was traditional, would be given over to introduction and ceremony, with several fights for show. Loras and Renly were to spar early in the afternoon, and while they had left the later slot open for the Dornish party, Willas’ mother advised Garlan as they were leaving dinner to be at the ready since, according to her, everyone knew Dornishmen had no idea how tourneys worked.

 

Garlan slowed his steps to match Willas’ as they left the great hall. “Out with it, then. Your face in there could have soured milk.”

 

“There are three hundred people riding here from Dorne. They’re here to pay homage to King Robert and he can’t be arsed to come. They’re here to make peace with the crown, and our parents can’t speak three words without insulting them.” He stopped to take a breath, leaning heavily on his cane. “I want to saddle Artos, ride as far as I can, and not come back until all of this bloody nonsense is finished.”

 

“But if you do that,” Garlan reminded him, “you don’t get your sand horses.”

 

“That isn’t what they’re called. They’re—“ Willas glared at his brother. “Never mind. That’s not the point.”

 

“Of course not,” Garlan replied with a shrug. “Father’s always hated the Dornish. And even if Mother didn’t, when you had your fall—”

 

“Exactly,” snapped Willas. “ _My_ fall. Not some Dornish plot.”

 

It had been his first and last tournament, a few months after his fourteenth name day, and the luck of the lists had pitted him against the Red Viper of Dorne. Prince Oberyn had all too predictably knocked him from his horse on the second pass, and Willas remembered little after the moment he realised his left ankle was caught in the stirrup. He awakened several days later in his bed, his leg in plaster, and Martell’s maester—with the face of a bulldog and the hands of a fighter—had stayed in Highgarden for nearly six months teaching him to walk again.

 

“His maester saved my leg,” he added. “For that alone, I’d have forgiven Martell, but he also happens to be a decent man who didn’t intend any harm. More importantly, it’s been eight years since it happened.”

 

“Doesn’t matter. Every time she sees him,” Garlan said, “she sees you on the tourney ground, your leg half twisted off, pale as the grave.”

 

“I wouldn’t have been riding in that tourney in the first place if Father hadn’t forced me. She ought to be angrier with _him_.”

 

“You didn’t see her after it happened. I thought she was going to push Father out of the stands.” Garlan took Willas’ elbow to pull him to a halt—carefully, at least, so Willas could keep his balance. “You’re not being fair to her, Will.”

 

“ _I’m_ not being fair?” echoed Willas. “The Dornish are our guests and they deserve to be treated as such.”

 

“And they will be,” sighed Garlan. “You’re overreacting. Mother and Father are only doing this so they _will_ behave.”

 

“That doesn’t make me feel better, but thank you for trying.”

 

“I sometimes think you decided on my nickname so you could force me to be nicer to you,” Garlan remarked.

 

“Would you rather be Garlan the Glutton? I have it on good authority that Cousin Leo was planning on that.” Willas rolled his eyes. “I do mean it. Thank you.”

 

“Will, you’re taking it all too seriously. It’s a tourney. Nothing more. You’re not even jousting. Which reminds me, when are you drawing lots?”

 

“The first day, at dawn. Lord Stannis and I will preside, and Father will make the announcement.” Following Willas’ injury—and no doubt forced by Willas’ mother and grandmother—Lord Mace had officially changed the tourney rules at Highgarden to discourage unequal matches that put younger, greener knights at risk, but to Willas’ disappointment, few had taken them up on the offer. _Young men are proud to the point of stupidity_ , had been his grandmother’s assessment.

 

 _Except for you, Willas_ , she was quick to add, less for his benefit than for House Tyrell’s more generally. _You’ll learn quickly, my boy, that it is far more infuriating than comforting to be clever in this world_. He at least gained some small satisfaction out of watching foolish lords lose their money, and had started making suggestions to knights who looked to be having a difficult time of it.

 

“And don’t forget,” Garlan was saying, “we had word from Nightsong that fully half of the Dornish host is made up of ladies.”

 

“I doubt Lyanna Stark would thank you for calling her a lady,” remarked Willas, “but that’s a good point.”

 

“Ashara Dayne is coming, Will. They say a man can drown in her eyes.”

 

“They also say she prefers young men to drown in her eyes, so you’re in luck.” Lady Ashara was the Sword of the Morning’s sister and she had served Princess Elia Martell since they were young girls. She had never married despite offers from nearly every lord south of the Trident, and her name had been linked with men as disparate as the Red Viper and Tyrion Lannister, the Imp of Casterly Rock. “Best to brush up on your dancing first, though. Many’s the knight who rules in the lists and stumbles in the banquet. Ask Margaery to help you.”

 

Garlan left him soon afterward to find Margaery and her dancing-master, while Willas made his slow way up to the battlements facing the southern Roseroad. There were no clouds in the horizon as yet, but he could almost feel the crackle of distant thunder in the air. The first sparks of the oncoming storm.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oberyn tells Tyrion in ASOS that, after the joust in which Willas Tyrell injured his leg, he “sent a maester to him […] but it was all he could do to save the boy’s leg. The knee was far past mending” (Tyrion V). We don’t learn who this maester is in canon or how Oberyn knew him, but this fic assumes that he is Archmaester Marwyn, one of whose acolytes is Oberyn’s daughter Sarella, disguised as Alleras the Sphinx.
> 
> (I have a pet headcanon that Oberyn and Marwyn met at the Citadel and had a series of adventures together across the Free Cities, but that is a story for another day.)
> 
> We haven’t “visited” Highgarden in the books, and there’s only a short description in The World of Ice and Fire, so I’ve taken the liberty of drawing inspiration from several different French châteaux: Chambord, Hautefort, Villandry, and Fontainebleau. None of these are medieval (except for bits of Fontainebleau)—they were all begun during the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries with later additions—but given Highgarden’s location, resources, and reputation, this seemed like a more accurate reflection than a traditionally ‘medieval’ building. Another inspiration is Hampton Court Castle just outside of London, with its extensive gardens and mishmash of architectural styles. There will be more on this later.
> 
> Next chapter: Winterfell


	3. Brandon

****

There was a chill in the air when Brandon awakened—the kind that slipped through his nose and shot like a crossbow bolt straight to his lungs. He burrowed deeper beneath the pile of mismatched sleeping furs, remembering, as he always did on cold mornings, the special torture of waking up in Sunspear in high summer, even the thinnest of bedsheets soaked in sweat.

 

Of all the things he missed about Sunspear, the heat was not one of them.

 

He’d confessed this sheepishly to his aunt Lyanna as they sailed north from Starfall two years earlier, and she’d laughed. “It’s why I could never properly live in Dorne. Too bloody hot.” She slung one arm around his shoulders, and he realised with a start that they were of a height. “It’s the wolf blood. Stark blood. Something in you craves the cold.”

 

The first time he saw snow, he’d wanted to fold it into paper and send it to Egg, who hated the heat as much as he did, but stood little chance of escaping it. _Not if he stays in Dorne, and maybe not even in King’s Landing_. Although if winter came— _No,_ when _winter comes_ , he corrected himself, recalling where he was.

 

As though Brandon could forget.

 

He pushed aside the sleeping furs and, shivering, pulled on his clothing as quickly as he could. Linen smallclothes and two layers of wool tunics beneath his riding leathers. If he’d worn half of it in Sunspear, he would have boiled to death in seconds. Throwing the thick, woolen cloak over his shoulders, he made his way down the winding stone stair. There were other ways he could have taken that were warmer, but the side stair was the fastest route to the stables. When he opened the door to the courtyard, he immediately tugged his cloak more closely around him.

 

Some ten minutes later, he emerged from the stables to find the fifteen men Lord Stark had asked for the previous night waiting in the courtyard. Lord Stark arrived soon afterward with his two older sons, Robb and Bran (seven years old and also named after Brandon’s father), and his other ward, Theon Greyjoy. Without a word, Lord Stark gave his signal, and they set forth from Winterfell.

 

Winterfell was the seat of House Stark, the proud heart of the North, and the Stark words echoed in every corner: _Winter is coming_. The Starks traced their blood back to the First Men, just as Brandon’s mother’s family had been kings of the Torrentine thousands of years before. Lady Ashara Dayne had no high opinion of the current Lord Stark, Brandon’s uncle, who she had described, long before Brandon met him, as a cold, unfeeling man. Aunt Lyanna called him honourable and just, devoted to the North and to his family, and if there was a hitch in her voice when she said it, Brandon pretended not to notice.

 

It was a ride of several hours to execute a deserter, but one of Lord Stark’s rules was that _the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword_. Brandon had seen a few executions in Dorne, but Prince Doran used a headsman, as did King Robert and most other lords south of the Neck. Not so in the North. If a man was to be executed for treason, the executioner was Lord Eddard Stark with his greatsword Ice, made of spell-forged Valyrian steel. He said it was too easy to forget the gravity of death otherwise, and the words had wormed their way into Brandon’s mind, never quite out of reach.

 

That was how the Starks had always seen justice done, according to Aunt Lyanna. She was Lord Stark’s younger sister, and, at least in the south, the singers called her the She-Wolf of Sunspear. She had been knighted by the Sword of the Morning himself, the greatest knight in the realm, and had fought beside him against outlaws in the Riverlands and the Reach before going to Dorne to serve Princess Elia. Brandon’s father had been her eldest brother and the heir to Winterfell long ago, before Mad King Aerys murdered him. Some people said it was Aunt Lyanna’s fault, but according to Brandon’s mother, only idiots thought that, and Lady Ashara had no patience for idiots.

 

She spared little enough for her son.

 

He had been an accident—the consequence of a single night his parents had spent together before his father’s death. His father had even been betrothed to another when it happened, the Lady Catelyn, who was now Lady of Winterfell and whose attention Brandon did his best to avoid. And while he’d long ago made a jape to Dany that his mother might as well be married to Princess Elia as much as Aunt Lyanna was, they’d both known it wasn’t entirely in jest.

 

He’d had a letter from Dany not a moon’s turn past. _How did you do it? I think about leaving the Water Gardens and it makes me cry. How do you not die from missing it?_ And she was only going to Highgarden, which, compared to Winterfell, was practically still in Dorne. As Brandon looked up at the grey, cloudy sky from the windows of the Great Keep, it seemed unreal that somewhere, thousands of leagues off, she and Egg were riding north under skies turned almost white by the sun.

 

Dany was the youngest, if only by half a year, but she and Brandon had shared a wet-nurse, and as they grew older, joined Dany’s cousin Egg and the others in the pools at the Water Gardens, where it hadn’t mattered who their parents were. Only later did he learn that Egg was Aegon Targaryen, thought by some to be the rightful king on the Iron Throne, and Dany was Daenerys, daughter of Mad King Aerys, who had murdered Brandon’s father. Egg’s father had been the Mad King’s eldest son, which made him Dany’s nephew despite his being nearly two years older than her.

 

“It’s a tangled bloody web,” had been his mother’s reply when Brandon confronted her. “King Aerys was mad as a hornet’s nest, and those around him did what was needed to survive. It’s no more Dany’s fault that it is yours who your fathers were.”

 

Lady Ashara had served as Princess Elia’s chief lady-in-waiting since they were girls together at the Water Gardens, and she had been imprisoned with the princess in King’s Landing during the war. Sometimes, when she’d had too much wine, she would tell stories about those days that rivalled the singers in Prince Doran’s court, full of plots and secret doors and daggers in the dark. Her stories were almost as good as Aunt Lyanna’s tales of snarks, grumkins, and White Walkers, but they never had happy endings.

 

Dany hadn’t even been born when her father was cut down before the Iron Throne for his crimes. Her mother had died giving birth to her, and Princess Elia had raised her alongside Egg and his older sister Rhaenys. She was also the kindest, sweetest person Brandon knew, who always took his side even if she afterward told him he was wrong.

 

“Elia told me children shouldn’t be blamed for their fathers’ sins,” Dany said when she’d finally found him. “I never even knew him.”

 

“You’re the better for it,” Brandon told her. “Viserys knew him.”

 

Viserys was Dany’s elder brother, and he was the one reason that Brandon still worried about her, however little good it did. _At least if she’s in Highgarden, she’ll be away from him_. It was a small comfort. And, whatever the dangers of King’s Landing, Egg and Rhaenys had the greatest knight in the realm guarding them.

 

He was also Brandon’s uncle, strictly speaking, but Ser Arthur Dayne had forsworn his family when he was nineteen to join the Kingsguard. He had served Egg’s father Prince Rhaegar, but when King Robert killed him in battle, Ser Arthur had refused to swear fealty to him. Instead, he put off his white cloak for nearly five years, travelling the Seven Kingdoms as a hedge knight, helping smallfolk rebuild their lands after the war. It was like being nephew to Symeon Star-Eyes or Aemon the Dragonknight—Ser Arthur scarcely seemed real, even when he was watching Brandon train and correcting his form.

 

Not that he’d admitted this to Cousin Robb, Lord Stark’s eldest son, who had been so impressed that the new boy being fostered at Winterfell was the Sword of the Morning’s nephew. And there was something in Brandon that couldn’t bear to disappoint him with the truth. So he sometimes embroidered on things about his life in Dorne to include Ser Arthur and when he felt guilty afterward he talked to the giant weirwood in the godswood. There was some comfort in talking even if he wasn’t certain anyone was listening.

 

The Martells and the Daynes followed the Faith of the Seven like the rest of the south, but every time Brandon had entered the sept in Sunspear, it felt as though the very stones were watching him with suspicion. He had quietly stopped going when he was about eight years old and realised Aunt Lyanna didn’t go either. She went instead to a small walled garden about the size of Brandon’s bedchamber that was so overgrown with trees and vines that the sunlight barely crept through the leaves, except for one small corner, ruthlessly cut back for a single bed of blue roses. _My little bit of the North_ , Aunt Lyanna called it. He later learnt that Princess Elia had gifted her the land and found the most skilled gardeners in Dorne to try to convince a weirwood to grow in thin Dornish soil. It had not worked, but Aunt Lyanna had carved a face into a cypress tree and had pronounced it a godswood all the same.

 

The godswood at Winterfell was bigger than the palace and the gardens put together. The first time Brandon saw it, he had stupidly asked if that was the wolfswood he’d seen on a map before coming north. That had been the first time he heard Theon Greyjoy laugh, and decided he hated the sound.

 

Egg would have told him to ignore Greyjoy, but Egg was trueborn and his father had been a royal prince. Brandon did his best and reminded himself that Greyjoy wouldn’t last an hour in the desert.

 

Theon Greyjoy was several years older than Brandon and Robb and was already living at Winterfell when Brandon arrived. He’d also spent the first fortnight making jabs at Dorne, at baseborn sons in general, and, inevitably, at Brandon’s mother.

 

“How do we even know that Lord Brandon was your father?” he’d asked, that infuriating smile creeping across his face. “We all know what they say about Dornishwomen.”

 

That was when Brandon hit him in the face, hard enough that he wondered if he’d broken his nose. Robb managed to separate them until Lord Stark arrived, and Brandon had waited quietly while Maester Luwin tended to Greyjoy and Lord Stark spoke with Robb. Only then did he turn to Brandon.

 

“My son tells me Theon provoked you.”

 

“He insulted me and my family. And yours, my lord.” He looked up at those last words, meeting Lord Stark’s eyes. “He’s been doing it since I arrived. I…I’d had enough.”

 

“Well, his nose isn’t broken, according to Maester Luwin,” said Lord Stark, sounding neither stern nor amused. “He’ll have a bruise for a few weeks, no doubt. Let us hope he’s learned from it.” Brandon suspected not, but he wasn’t about to say it out loud. “What exactly did he say to you?”

 

_He called my mother a whore_ was what Brandon wanted to say. But that wasn’t what Greyjoy had said, and that made it all the worse. After a moment to gather his thoughts, he said, “He asked if I was sure Lord Brandon was my father. That because my mother’s Dornish…” Brandon tried to swallow the lump in his throat but couldn’t, and he could feel tears pricking at his eyes. “Well, he didn’t have to say much more than that, did he?”

 

“Oh, lad.” He felt something heavy on his shoulder and realised it was Lord Stark’s hand. “Anyone with eyes can see you’ve got Stark blood in your veins. Don’t let him needle you.”

 

“That’s what my lady mother told me,” said Brandon, finally looking at him again. “She says there’s nothing wrong with being baseborn.”

 

“That sounds like Lady Ashara.” Lord Stark’s smile caught him by surprise—it looked almost regretful. “Your father was…ladies were drawn to him, and…”

 

“Aunt Lyanna told me about him,” Brandon said, earning himself a glance of relief from Lord Stark. “Am I his only son?”

 

“So far as I know, yes. Which is why you’re being fostered here. You’re my nephew, baseborn or not, but you’ll need to learn to ignore the japes.”

 

He’d tried to take that lesson to heart in the months that followed. For the most part, Greyjoy ignored him, and Brandon was content to stay out of his way. He started training with Robb since they were of an age and was guiltily pleased to discover that Robb was a far better partner than Egg, who was a skilled archer but weak with a sword. But Egg also had a way of simply _being_ there without demanding Brandon’s attention, and he missed that most of all.

 

 

***

 

The man being executed was a deserter not from any lord or holdfast, but from the Night’s Watch, a graver crime by far. In Dorne, the Wall was little more than a story—admittedly one told by Aunt Lyanna, who had been there—but Brandon had now met a handful of black brothers, who were always given room and board in Winterfell if they were travelling south.

 

Desertion from the Night’s Watch was treason against not just the crown but all the people of the Seven Kingdoms.

 

As Brandon watched Lord Stark question the former black brother, whose head hung low in shame, he glanced too at the other men surrounding him. Greyjoy held Ice only because Robb was not quite tall enough, and Brandon wished he could slap the smirk off his smug Ironborn face. _A man is about to die_.

 

Whatever answers the prisoner had given Lord Stark, too softly for Brandon to hear, were unsatisfactory, as Lord Stark nodded to Greyjoy and the guardsmen dragged the deserter to the nearby block. Brandon was close enough now to see his hands shaking, his lips forming words. A prayer? _To which gods, I wonder_. Men came to the Night’s Watch from all over the realm.

 

And then it was over, the blood streaked across the muddied snow. He’d seen little Bran almost flinch, but Robb put one hand on his shoulder to calm him and whispered something to him that made the little boy sit straighter on his pony.

 

They started back along the road to Winterfell, Brandon only half-listening to the conversation between Robb and Bran. Only when Robb remarked that the deserter died bravely did Brandon offer his own observation. “There was fear in his eyes.”

 

Little Bran whipped his head round fast enough to startle his pony, while Robb shot him an irritated look. Brandon shrugged. “There’s no shame in that. Only fools don’t fear death at least a little. That’s what my uncle said.” He’d said it to Aunt Lyanna, not to Brandon directly, but that mattered less.

 

Robb seemed to consider arguing, but instead shook his head. “He died well. Race you to the bridge, Sand?”

 

Brandon responded by nudging Shadow, who obligingly shot forward, swift as an arrow. She had been a gift from Aunt Lyanna on his departure from Dorne, bred from her own northern stallion and one of Prince Oberyn’s Dornish mares, her coat a shimmering smoke-grey. She was not yet as surefooted as Robb’s mount in the wet autumn snow, but she was learning. _Like me_. And on the relatively clear trail through the forest, her gait was perfect.

 

Robb was gaining on him as they came within sight of the river, but when Brandon glanced back after crossing the bridge, he was alone. Frowning, he wheeled Shadow round and trotted back to the southern side of the river. Robb had tied his horse to one of the bridge’s posts and disappeared down the riverbank.

 

Brandon called his name three times before Robb’s head popped up from behind a large snowdrift, coppery hair gleaming against the white. “Sand, you’ll never believe this. Get over here.”

 

It was a wolf, but not a wolf—it had a wolf’s shape, but was the size of a horse. “ _Gods_ ,” whispered Brandon, Aunt Lyanna’s tales of winter beasts rearing to vivid life in his mind. “Is that…?”

 

“A direwolf,” Robb breathed. “A real direwolf, Brandon. Within miles of Winterfell.”

 

That was when they heard the whimpering. Brandon reminded himself that the beast was dead—had been dead for several days, from the looks of her—as Robb crept closer, and when he cried out, Brandon reached for his sword even though, had the direwolf still breathed, both of them would have been done for.

 

“She’s whelped, Brandon. Three pups…no, five!” He turned and Brandon saw a squirming dark bundle in his arms. “Fetch Father, Brandon, quickly.”

 

The riverbank turned to chaos within moments, the Winterfell guardsmen visibly spooked by the direwolf’s massive corpse, whispering of bad omens and unnatural things, suggesting it would be a mercy to do away with the pups then and there. Only little Bran was horrified at the suggestion, and Robb declared they would keep them instead.

 

He barely heard the arguments that followed, but Brandon already knew what he would say when he interrupted Lord Stark. “There are five pups,” he pointed out, “three male, two female.” He was only guessing the last part, but even if it turned out elsewise, by then it wouldn’t matter.

 

Lord Stark looked at him. “And what of that, Brandon?”

 

“You have five children, my lord,” said Brandon. “Three sons and two daughters. The direwolf is the sigil of House Stark. Your children were meant to have these pups.”

 

Unsurprisingly, Lord Stark relented, and the remaining pups were gathered up to go to the Winterfell kennels. They started once more across the bridge, but Brandon stopped short at the sound of a brief, high-pitched yip.

 

_Another one?_ He left Shadow where she stood—she wouldn’t bolt unless that direwolf awakened—and vaulted back down the riverbank to where the corpse still lay, half-buried in snow. Only this time there was a much smaller shape beside it, white as the snowbank itself, with dark red eyes.

 

“What happened to you?” he asked, holding out one hand. The pup took a few steps forward and nosed at his gloved fingertip. Brandon scooped it up and tucked it beneath his elbow—it was smaller even than the pup he’d handed little Bran.

 

“An albino,” Greyjoy pronounced smugly when Brandon rejoined the others. “This one will die even faster than the others.”

 

Brandon looked at him until his smile faded. “I think not, Greyjoy. This one belongs to me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here is where I take advantage of fanfiction as a particular type of writing, in that the bulk of this AU is going to focus on events in the south while I mostly leave the North alone to slowly mould itself into a version of what we find in canon. If you're a Stark fan, I'm sorry, but there are plenty of AUs that are more Stark-focused, and while the Starks are definitely in this fic, they are supporting rather than main characters. Fanfiction is allowed to show its scaffolding in this way, and I’m more than happy to take advantage of that to tell the story I’m most interested in telling.
> 
> Lyanna’s survival would fundamentally change the dynamic of the Stark family from what we know in canon. For anyone who came here from [False Sorrow’s Eye](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3815260) this is the bit that retcons the ending of that fic, which I was not satisfied with even when I wrote it, but deadlines be deadlines, and so I went with what I could finish.
> 
> I had not meant to imply that Ned had forgiven Lyanna for her role in what eventually became Robert’s Rebellion, but I can see how one might have picked up that implication from the original ending. Short version: Ned has not forgiven Lyanna, and there is still a clear breach between them; the evolution of that relationship is part of the plot of this fic, so I don’t intend to give it away here. :-)
> 
> One of the fun things in this AU is how much stays the same even when certain plot events (and character survival) drastically alters other events or plotlines. Brandon Sand (as Jon Snow is known in this fic) is still baseborn and still has a great deal of angst about it, for different but still comprehensible reasons (or so I hope).
> 
> Also, in case it’s not clear, Ned Stark genuinely believes that Brandon is his elder brother’s son by Ashara Dayne. That was left ambiguous in "False Sorrow’s Eye," but I’ll go ahead and confirm it here. Within this universe, only a handful of people know Brandon Sand’s true identity, and, with the exception of Elia Martell, all of them were present at his birth.
> 
> The spoken dialogue from the direwolf scene is almost entirely verbatim from the first chapter of _A Game of Thrones_.


	4. Elia

The first thing Elia realised when she awakened was that she was lying on something soft and decidedly not mule-smelling. It wasn’t quite a bed, but she opened her eyes to find a ceiling above her head and an arched doorway in front of her. Through the arches, in the distance, were red peaks, still half-shadowed in the twilight. Lyanna was kneeling on the floor beside her.

 

“Where are we, Lya? I must have fallen asleep. Where’s Aegon? Where’s Ser Arthur?”

 

“They’ve gone ahead to the pass. It will take ages for that crush of people to get moving toward Highgarden.” It did seem as though half of Dorne was riding north for the great tourney, though most of them would return home while Elia, her children, and their household continued north to King’s Landing. “We won’t be missed,” said Lyanna, “if we disappear for a day or two.”

 

“Disappear for a…Lya, what have you _done_? What is this place?”

 

“The tower.” Lyanna’s eyes flickered downward. “I can’t call it by its old name. Not yet.”

 

Elia sat up to look more closely at the Tower of Joy, a place she’d imagined so many times while trapped within the walls of Maegor’s Holdfast at the mercy of a mad king. It was both smaller and more beautiful than in her mind, like a jewel in the mountains. Here, one could forget that there was a world elsewhere. _Is that why you lingered here, Rhaegar? I never understood until now_.

 

Remote as it was, someone had taken time and expense to care for it since her husband’s ill-fated sojourn fourteen years ago. “I’d only ever seen this tower from down in the pass; I’d never have glimpsed it if Ash hadn’t pointed it out to me.” It seemed another lifetime, belonging to a girl who had died long ago. “She told me the story of where its name came from. A pretty tale.”

 

“A sad one, I thought.” Lyanna’s fingers began to fiddle with her belt buckle, and Elia took her hand. “I wanted to bring you here, El. Just once. I’ve avoided it for so long, though I paid to have it kept up.”

 

“Of course you did.” _This place changed your life. Destroyed your life_. She raised their joined hands to brush hers against Lyanna’s cheek. “Rhaegar brought you here.”

 

“I _came_ here,” Lyanna corrected her softly. “Of my own will. Don’t forget that. Rest assured, my brother never will.”

 

Elia had only encountered Eddard Stark three times, but his grudging tolerance for his sister’s presence in the North was well known—he accepted her help in the countryside and, in return, she had only visited Winterfell twice since the war, even as she made the Stark name ring in song and story across the realm. In the North now, those who might have cursed Lyanna Stark’s name for the deaths of their men spoke instead of outlaws she’d slain or—most recently, some three years past—a mighty lord she had angered by killing his baseborn son. When Elia asked her about that, Lyanna had closed her eyes, shuddered, and said the lord had not seen the women his son had slaughtered; she had done all the North a service by ridding them of him, and of the filthy murderer he called a manservant.

 

After this last incident, Elia had told Oberyn (but not Lyanna) exactly where Lord Stark could shove his vaunted honour. “You were a child—”

 

“Yes I was. A child old enough to marry Robert Baratheon on my father’s orders. To share his bed and bear him children, my whole life lived at his whim. I was old enough to know I would be miserable. Had I known the price…” For a moment, her eyes were miles away, and Elia tried to imagine her as Lady Baratheon of Storm’s End. The silence stretched, and when Lyanna finally looked back at her, there were tears in her eyes. “I was happy here, at first. It was so beautiful it hardly seemed real. And it _wasn’t_ real, because the whole world was burning and it was all because of me, while I hid away in the mountains, pretending I didn’t matter.”

 

“Lya—”

 

“Let me finish, El.” Chastened, Elia leant back against the cushion. “By the end, it was my prison. I thought it might be my tomb,” here, she shivered, “but I lived.”

 

“And you wanted me to see it. To understand what happened to you.” Tears pricked at Elia’s eyes. “What we did to you.”

 

“No. No, El, that’s not it at all,” Lyanna said, taking Elia’s hands in her own. Hers were covered in scars, old and new, the nails cut to the quick, nearly as dark from the sun as Elia’s were by birth. “I brought you here because I want this place to be the Tower of Joy again. Even for a few stolen days. I want to regret what I did. I _wish_ I could regret it, because that would make me a better woman.” She raised her hands to cup Elia’s cheeks. “But I’d be married to Robert. I’d be trapped forever. I wouldn’t have you. And I don’t want that world.”

 

Elia kissed her.

 

Her time with Lyanna was always stolen. From the children, usually, but just as often from Lyanna herself. Perhaps it was that year’s imprisonment in this very tower that made her so restless, but it might simply have been her nature that she could not abide staying in one place for more than a month or so. This last stretch had been the longest she had spent in Sunspear, nearly a quarter of a year. _It had to end sometime. All stolen summers do_. But she would wait to ask the inevitable question of when her lover would disappear into the horizon to chase glory and ghosts.

 

As she broke the kiss, she murmured, “Do the children know that you’ve kidnapped me?”

 

Lyanna’s grin spoke volumes. “They thought a few days of peace and quiet would do you good. Egg thinks you’ll overtire yourself before we even reach Highgarden, and the tower was a half a day’s ride out of the way.” She untwisted her fingers from Elia’s and leant in to kiss her again. “What they don’t know is all that I intend to do to you when you’re my captive.”

 

“I should hope you haven’t told them that,” murmured Elia. Lyanna’s lips brushed her throat and her fingers busied themselves with the fastenings of her gown. She had quick, clever hands, as Elia had plenty of cause to know. “But do tell me.”

 

“I’d rather show you.”

 

“Lya, look at those doors,” Elia protested even as Lyanna peeled away her travelling habit, leaving her in only a thin linen shift. “Someone could walk in at any moment.”

 

“We’re alone,” said Lyanna. “I sent the servants away.”

 

“Are you serious?”

 

“They’ll come back at dawn two days from now. They’ve left us food and drink, and even a bath right over there.” She gestured to what Elia realised was a copper tub near the hearth. “They’ll come back and we’ll rejoin the caravan. But until then,” she bent her head to Elia’s breast, “I want you all to myself.”

 

 _Oh, gods be good, what have I done to deserve this woman?_ By the time she sank into the lukewarm water—perfect for the heat of the Red Mountains in high summer—Elia was sleepy-eyed with satisfaction, the pain of the journey at least dulled and at the back of her mind.

 

Lyanna watched from the couch, perched in a catlike pose that looked utterly uncomfortable. “Once you’re finished, I’ll show you the chamber upstairs.”

 

It was admittedly beautiful, but as Elia stood on the balcony, gazing down at the Prince’s Pass far below, she wondered how many times Lyanna had stood there, little Brandon’s heart beating beneath her own, cursing the day she ever encountered Rhaegar Targaryen.

 

“Do you mourn him still?” Lyanna asked from behind her. “After all this time?”

 

Elia closed her eyes. “It’s more complicated than that. So much died with him, Lyanna. So many innocents, so many lives destroyed. I mourn for them. I mourn for my children’s father, as they do. And I mourn for the man Rhaegar might have been, at my side.” With a dry laugh, she added, “But there is one lash that stings the worst. I should be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, Lya.”

 

Lyanna slipped her arms around Elia’s waist, saying nothing.

 

“I know Cersei Lannister thought the same when Rhaegar lived, so perhaps it makes me a hypocrite, but there it is.”

 

“You are _my_ queen, for what that’s worth,” said Lyanna. “And every song they sing of me in the Seven Kingdoms has you in it.” Elia laughed. “I’m serious.”

 

“I’ve heard them.” ‘ _One kiss she stole from her sun princess and then once more away, the She-Wolf on her smoke-grey steed rode north at break of day.’ Even in songs, I am left behind_.

 

She turned to kiss Lyanna. “They’re proud of you in Dorne. I’ll miss the songs. I doubt King Robert would find them amusing.”

 

“I don’t know,” Lyanna murmured. “Ned said he liked singers, but I don’t know how much attention he pays to the words.”

 

“I can’t imagine you married to him.”

 

King Robert’s great love for Lyanna Stark, for which he’d started a war and claimed a kingdom, had not survived her rejection, but it had thankfully mellowed from fury to indifference over the years. _It doesn’t hurt_ , Lyanna had once remarked, _that he mistook me for a squire in three different tourneys and it embarrasses him. What beauty he once saw in me, I’ve cut out_. His actions during the Lannisport tourney had confirmed that—he did for her what he might have done for any knight in danger. It did not make Elia like him any better, but she could still be grateful.

 

“Me neither. And thankfully, we don’t need to.” As she kissed Elia, her hand skimmed along the edge of Elia’s bedrobe, tugging it open. “Oh, one more thing,” she whispered. “Rule of the tower.” The silk fell in a pool at Elia’s feet. “Not a stitch of clothing until we leave.”

 

“Lya, really,” protested Elia, her cheeks growing hot.

 

“I want this, El.” The words were half-muffled against Elia’s lips. “My sun princess. My queen. Like the song—let me drink with my eyes, too.”

 

“You and your songs. You’re as bad as Rhaegar.” Elia couldn’t help but laugh. “Very well. If the servants return early, you can explain it all to them.”

 

Afterward, they lay tangled together, Lyanna’s head on Elia’s shoulder, Elia’s fingers running idly through her cropped dark hair. “This was what I wanted,” said Lyanna “You and me, in this bed. It was what I’d wanted all along, only I didn’t know it then.”

 

“I’m glad you learned.”

 

“I had a good teacher,” she murmured, nuzzling Elia’s neck. But Elia was gazing at the ceiling above, seeing the silver-painted stars even in the dark. It was only when Lyanna said her name that she blinked back to the moment. “El, is something wrong?”

 

“You must have hated us so much, trapped here.”

 

For a moment, Lyanna didn’t speak. “After Ser Oswell came, after we found out everything that had happened, I begged Rhaegar to take me to King’s Landing, to let me _try_ to speak with Ned, at least let him know I was alive, but he refused. He cared more for the child I carried than for me, and I hated him for that.” Her hand drifted to Elia’s belly, to the faded scar that sliced from her ribs past her navel, without which both she and her son would be dead. “But I never hated you, El. None of this was your fault. It was _I_ who wronged _you_.”

 

“But I shouldn’t have let him do it. I _let_ him ride off to steal you from your brother to fulfil that mad prophecy of his. But then I think of his father—“

 

A shudder ran through her entire body, as it always would when even the name of Aerys Targaryen cracked the corners of her mind. Clear as daylight she could see him, hear his laughter like the scrape of metal on glass, smell blood from his scars beneath layers of pomade and perfume. _You will answer for Rhaegar. And for your own sins_.

 

“Elia. _Elia_.” Lyanna’s voice cut through the laughter, and Elia’s eyes opened to find herself back in the Tower of Joy, leagues from King’s Landing, Lyanna’s arms around her. “He’s dead, love. He’s been dead all these years. Jaime Lannister slit his throat, and did all the realm a great service.”

 

The war was already over by the time Jaime killed King Aerys, but the act had given the new king the excuse he needed to dismiss him from the Kingsguard as a favour to Jaime’s father Lord Tywin. Elia suspected there was more to it than that, but she had never pressed Lyanna on the topic. Whatever secrets Jaime Lannister had confided to her in their years serving Ser Arthur Dayne in the Riverlands after the war, she intended to keep.

 

Elia forced herself to think of Jaime—Lord of Casterly Rock now that his father was dead, and married to a Hightower of Oldtown, who had just borne him a daughter—and the tightness in her throat slowly began to ease. _Jaime killed him. Jaime killed him. Jaime slit his throat at the foot of the Iron Throne. Jaime saved us all_.

 

“He’s dead,” Lyanna repeated, “and you’re alive. There’s some satisfaction in that, surely.” As Elia’s breath slowed, Lyanna held her close. “It helps me, for what that’s worth. Sometimes I dream about that day in Lannisport. About the Mountain that Rides.”

 

There was a scar that raked its way from Lyanna’s shoulder to her navel, faded but still visible after nearly seven years. “I remind myself that only one of us breathes today.”

 

Elia had never heard it from Jaime’s mouth, but it was said that before Gregor Clegane lost his head for a slate of crimes that had somehow come to light only after his enraged—and unjustified—attack on Lyanna Stark in front of all the great lords of the realm, he had confessed to one not committed. It seemed that, when the late Lord Tywin had brought the armies of Casterly Rock to the gates of King’s Landing, it had been with plans of revenge. These plans had fallen apart when the city guard refused to open the gates, and Eddard Stark and his men arrived from the Trident before the Lannisters could mount a siege, but had those gates opened, Clegane and his comrade-in-arms, Amory Lorch, had been tasked with killing Rhaegar Targaryen’s children.

 

Sometimes that nightmare haunted her after all these years. But every time it did, she would watch the sun rise over the Sea of Dorne and remind herself of the gods’ mercy. _I have Lyanna. I have my children, I have Dany and Viserys, and Oberyn’s girls. That is enough_. And she would ignore the small voice that reminded her it was not.

 

On the third morning in the tower, Elia woke before dawn to find Lyanna standing on the balcony, gazing down at the pass below. Though there was a chill in the air, she was naked, the scars painting patterns across her back and shoulders. Every night when Lyanna was away, Elia would pray to the Warrior. _She’s one of yours, like it or not. Protect her when I can’t_. And every time Lyanna returned, it was with at least one more scar, if not several. “Lya, come back to bed, love.”

 

Lyanna crawled back under the covers. Her feet were freezing. “On second thought, let’s just stay here.”

 

“Oh, really?” Elia laughed. “You mean to wait on me hand and foot for the rest of my days?”

 

“I would.” Lyanna pressed her lips to the centre of Elia’s palm. “We could disappear. Spend the rest of our days in this tower, away from all of it. Nothing but beauty here. It truly would be the Tower of Joy.”

 

Elia gazed at her in the darkness, imagining the sun-browned skin and freckled nose, the great, curving scar, and the marks they shared from the children they’d borne. And that was the crux of it. Slowly, ruefully, she said, “We can’t leave the children.”

 

For a moment, Lyanna was silent. “You’re right,” she finally said, almost too softly for Elia to hear. “For the children. We owe them that, for bringing them into the world.”

 

“You’re leaving again, aren’t you? That’s why you brought me here.” Elia sighed. “I knew you would, love. I don’t blame you.” She reached over Lyanna to light the lamp beside the bed, sending wavering shadows across the room. “I’m happy I had you with me as long as I did this time.”

 

Lyanna bowed her head. “I need to go north.”

 

“To Winterfell? Is it Brandon?” Alone with Lyanna, she could ask that question. Ash would have scolded her— _You must keep up the pretence in private as well as in public to truly make it work_ —but that was no matter. “Is he all right?”

 

“He’s well. I’ll see him too, but that’s not why I’m going. I need to visit the Wall, El.” Lyanna gave a shuddering breath. “I had a dream.”

 

There was a rushing sound in Elia’s ears, the distant echo of her long-dead husband’s voice, _He is the prince who was promised, and his is the song of ice and fire_. She wasn’t so foolish as to think those things had died with Rhaegar, much as she may have wished it. “Lya, I’ve never pretended to understand—”

 

“Then _trust_ me, El. If it weren’t important, I wouldn’t leave you.”

 

“ _Are_ you leaving me?”

 

“Not now.” Lyanna looked down at her hands. “Not until we reach King’s Landing. I’ll go direct to the harbor and find the first ship to take me north. My path need never cross the king’s.”

 

“Lya—“

 

“He saved my life, and for that I owe him.” Her hand went to her shoulder, where the scar began. “Still, I think we are both happier when we each pretend the other does not exist.”

 

Elia nodded, not quite trusting her voice at first. “What was your dream, Lya?”

 

For a second, when Lyanna’s grey eyes met hers, a chill colder than any Elia had ever known seemed to bloom deep within her bones. “It’s not…I can’t really explain it. But there’s something…something’s coming.”

 

“From the North?”

 

“From beyond the Wall.”

 

There were no marks on maps beyond the Wall, at least none Elia had seen. No cities, no holdfasts, not even roads. There were vague outlines of forests and mountains that faded to nothing but white; a river, mayhap, though how a river might flow in a frozen wasteland, Elia did not know.

 

Now, in the gentle cool of a summer desert night, she shivered. For years Lyanna had told the children stories of wildlings and shapechangers and other grisly Northern things, and Elia had listened alongside them more often than not. _They’re children’s tales, to frighten them in the night_. “But it’s summer, Lyanna. The longest in living memory—”

 

“Exactly. They say in my family that the longer the summer, the worse the winter that follows.”

 

“You Starks. Must everything be about winter?”

 

“That’s not the point, El.” Lyanna sighed. “I remember when Ser Arthur and I rode north through the Kingswood after the war and I saw the trees tipped with green. I wondered then, was it all for nothing? Or did all that death somehow satisfy whatever gods had set that prophecy in motion? I hoped for a dream that would answer my questions, but nothing happened. For years, my dreams were…normal. As normal as dreams ever are.”

 

“When did you have the…” It was a colour, but Elia knew it wasn’t blue.

 

“Green dream.” She could hear the smile in Lyanna’s voice. “The night before we left Sunspear. You’d come back from the sept while I was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake you before the journey. So I wrote a letter to the maester at the Wall and Maester Caelotte sent it on.”

 

“The maester at the Wall?” echoed Elia. There was a story she vaguely remembered about some uncle of Rhaegar’s grandfather taking the black. _But surely he must be long dead by now, freezing up there at the edge of the world_.

 

“Just Maester Aemon now, but he was once Aemon Targaryen. He’s a sweet, kind, funny old man who remembers so many things and I wish you could meet him, but he can’t leave the Wall, and you…”

 

“Not in a thousand years, no matter what you promised me,” Elia finished. “But I do want to see Winterfell someday. Not in winter,” she added quickly.

 

“And you will,” said Lyanna, laughing. “You might even charm Ned as I cannot. Even better, we’ll all go. You and I and the children.”

 

“Our children,” Elia added before leaning her head against Lyanna’s shoulder with a sigh. “Although, Mother have mercy, there will be days to come when I will wish with all my heart that I took you up on your mad offer.”

 

Lyanna studied her for a long moment. “I wish you had too, love.”

 

But they both knew that the moment—sweet as it was—had passed. Twined together, they watched as the sun rose over the Red Mountains, calling them back to duty once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of the complaints that has come up about the world in canon is that GRRM has taken the worst of medieval atrocity and escalated it by squeezing isolated events decades apart into the span of several years. But in order to do that, he had to set the stage using the sack of King’s Landing as a starting point. Tywin Lannister commits the very definition of a war crime and _he gets away with it_. Completely free. He doesn’t even lose face over it. Sure, the entire kingdom of Dorne hates him, but Tywin doesn’t care about that one bit.
> 
> Then, when Catelyn Stark kidnaps Tyrion at the Crossroads Inn, nobody is surprised when Tywin responds by setting the Riverlands on fire and letting his pet monster Gregor Clegane murder hundreds of people for fun.
> 
> In this universe, the sack of King’s Landing doesn’t happen. I cannot help but feel that that would alter the landscape enough that other things may not happen, or would happen differently. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but one of the choices I’ve made in this fic is that without Tywin Lannister’s protection, Gregor Clegane is executed shortly after the Greyjoy rebellion when it becomes clear that he is a deeply disturbed individual with near-uncontrollable violent impulses. This makes Sandor Clegane the lord of the holdfast, and would obviously put him in a very different position from canon.
> 
> One of the other lacunae we have in canon is for the first few years after Robert’s Rebellion. We know that spring came, so everyone was presumably thrilled about that and saw it as a sign that the rebellion was blessed by the gods, etc. But a war still happened and while a recovery in spring is easier than one in winter, it presumably took some time for things to return to normal. I have given Lyanna a role in those reconstruction efforts, alongside Arthur Dayne and Jaime Lannister at first, and others later on, and based on these efforts, she has managed to earn herself at least grudging tolerance from enough lords, and genuine gratitude from the people she has directly helped. (And, yes, that was a passing reference to a certain dodgy Northern family with a penchant for flaying; more on that later.)
> 
> Next: Clash of the wedding parties


	5. Ashara

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like pretty much every chapter from here on out is going to begin with an apology for delays, and I wish that weren't the case, but RL has gone a bit haywire in the past month or so and I can't necessarily promise that it's getting any less chaotic. But this fic is not abandoned--I promise--and I will do my utmost to keep posting on something resembling an actual schedule, but it's been a bit of a challenge to find writing time of late, as writing is sadly not my day job.

Ashara had been known to jest that her family ought to change its sigil to the Myrish glass. Her father had been obsessed with them, paying handsomely for case upon case of lenses that Arion sold to the Citadel for a handsome profit as soon as Father’s bones disappeared into the family crypt. But Arthur saved a small handful and had a glass made for her of silver inlaid with amethysts as a name-day gift.

 

She held it to her eye now, and the Tower of Joy came into view. _As beautiful and impractical as it ever was_. By now, it ought to be empty and shuttered again, the last of the servants making their way down the tiny path toward the Prince’s Pass. When Lyanna Stark had proposed her little pleasure jaunt, it had struck Ashara as the purest kind of nonsense, but when Elia and Lyanna arrived in their camp at the northern edge of the Prince’s Pass, Elia’s expression—indeed, the very set of her shoulders—spoke volumes for how necessary the nonsense had been.

 

_A few days to think of naught but herself_. Whatever differences of opinion she and Elia’s paramour had, Ashara was forced to admit that Lyanna knew full well what Elia needed, and had given it to her.

 

“Now _that_ is the face of a woman who has been well and properly fucked,” said Prince Oberyn’s voice from behind her. “I should give the She-Wolf my compliments.”

 

Ashara rolled her eyes. “Don’t be vulgar. She’s your sister.”

 

“She’s also been insufferable for the past three months and I have tolerated it in silence.”

 

“Some silence,” retorted Ashara. “ _We_ ,” she added, gesturing toward the Red Viper’s long-time paramour Ellaria Sand, who was standing some distance away, deep in discussion with their eldest daughter, “have heard about your woes often and at great length. Usually uninvited.”

 

“My dearest Lady Ashara—”

 

“Don’t you _dearest_ me, you reprobate.” She prodded him in the shoulder before sighing. “I truly thought she might change her mind so we could all go back to Sunspear.”

 

“There’s still time, you know.” said Prince Oberyn. “Highgarden is not King’s Landing.”

 

“Then I suppose one prays for her change of heart. If one is the praying sort.”

 

Ellaria returned to her paramour’s side and linked her arm through his. “Elia wants to join the tourney. I’ve told her she’s too young but I think she might listen to you if you tell her so as well.”

 

“She is as stubborn as her namesake,” replied Prince Oberyn with a shrug, “but for you, I will try.” And he strode off toward the girl, who immediately began to plead with him; while she was too far for Ashara to hear, Ellaria’s eyeroll told her all she needed to know.

 

“She says she is nearly as old as the She-Wolf was when she rode in the tourney at Harrenhal. Never mind that that is hardly an example one ought to follow.”

 

“Indeed,” echoed Ashara.

 

She had never been the sort of girl who dreamt of knighthood and feats of arms, but there were enough of them in Prince Doran’s court, and Ashara certainly understood the desire to hit idiotic men with sticks even if she did not act upon it. Lyanna Stark had made a point of taking at least one girl as her squire, even if she also took on a boy every now and again as a favour. Prince Oberyn’s eldest daughter, though only a handful of years younger than Lyanna, had been her first, and would be fighting in the mêlée in Highgarden alongside her. It seemed Elia Sand—fourth-born of his Sand Snakes—was hoping to follow in her half-sister’s footsteps, and everyone in the Dornish party knew the She-Wolf had yet to find a replacement for the Northern girl built like a bear who she had knighted earlier in the year.

 

After confirming that the last of the retainers had rejoined the camp in the Prince’s Pass, Ashara took off for her lady’s tent, where she found Elia reclined on extra cushions covering her camp cot.

 

“You found the Tower refreshing, I see,” was Ashara’s opening sally.

 

“I had no idea where we were going until I awakened there,” Elia admitted with a rueful chuckle. “It is a beautiful place.”

 

_Not always_. Ashara didn’t speak it aloud, but she remembered all too well the anxious weeks she had spent staring out from that balcony, waiting for an invisible axe to fall. That it had not still seemed half a miracle.

 

“And you fared well enough without me,” she added, pushing herself to a seated position and untwisting her hair from the net that held it in place. It tumbled—dark, streaked with white—over her shoulders. Without missing a beat, Ashara picked up the goldenwood-handled hairbrush from a nearby table and took up her accustomed place behind her lady. “I hope Oberyn behaved himself.”

 

“As much as he ever does. Ellaria helps.”

 

“I thank the gods for her every day,” murmured Elia. “I can only imagine Doran does too. He would be insufferable without her.”

 

“He worries about you.”

 

“Well, he needn’t,” Elia sighed. “I know there’s no way to convince him of that. Oberyn is as overprotective as that bear girl of Lyanna’s was.”

 

“I believe that was merely her house’s sigil, but that’s not the point. He worries, and so do I.”

 

“I know you do. And I wish you’d reconsider, Ash. There are too many awful memories in the Red Keep for you; surely you’d be happier in Sunspear.”

 

_We would_ all _be happier in Sunspear_. Again, Ashara didn’t speak her thoughts aloud, though she suspected Elia already knew them. The scant handful of good memories of the Red Keep had long been drowned out by the horrors that followed—men burned alive, their screams echoing through the great throne room, and one man’s in particular, his blackened skull impaled outside Princess Elia’s bedchamber in Maegor’s Holdfast as a daily reminder. And one smaller, quieter, ghost, of a too-early babe buried hastily somewhere within the castle walls. _I failed you too, little one, just as I failed your father_.

 

But those paths had long been trod, overgrown now, and there were too many other concerns.

 

“My place is with you,” said Ashara, her voice thick. The brush caught on a knot, and as she blinked, she felt tears in her eyes. “Even if it means going back to that dung-heap of a city.”

 

“It may not be so bad now.” Princess Elia took the hairbrush from Ashara’s hand and, with a sharp twist, broke the knot. “I tell myself that so I won’t change my mind.”

 

“If your gut is telling you not to go back there, you should listen.”

 

Elia sighed. “I can’t let Rhaenys go alone. She thinks she’s strong enough, but she has no idea.”

 

“She’s a woman grown, Elia. Some things she ought to learn for herself—”

 

“ _Not there_.” Elia’s eyes met hers. “I know how much Robert hates us, and Cersei too. I can’t let her face them alone. Jon Arryn may think this is the way to peace, but he can’t possibly understand.”

 

“I don’t know that he thinks that at all. It looks pretty on paper, never mind how it plays out in life.” Ashara sank onto the cot beside the princess. “You could all be walking into a trap. You know this.”

 

Elia’s laugh was without a scrap of humour. “I’ve walked into them before and lived to tell the tale.”

 

“Barely. How many times did you look death in the eye when you last rode north? I can count three. Maybe even four, depending on how one counts Lord Tywin’s revenge plot—”

 

“I _know_ , Ash. But we have no choice, do we? If I refuse, all the might of the Seven Kingdoms will come down upon Dorne, and make no mistake, we will lose.” Elia lowered her voice. “Lyanna tells me winter is coming. A hard winter, and a long one.”

 

“Of course Lyanna would tell you that,” said Ashara with a sigh. “It’s probably wishful thinking. But even if winter _were_ coming, what of it?”

 

“If we could stall them just long enough…” Elia shrugged. “We can’t afford to go to war, and nor can they.”

 

“How does Lyanna know this?”

 

“You won’t like the answer.”

 

“No.” All humour dropped from Ashara’s mind with the sound of chains and a mad king’s laughter. “Not that again.”

 

“Ash, I need you to listen.”

 

“No. _You_ need to listen,” Ashara hissed. “The last time she had a prophetic dream and did something about it, you _know_ what happened. Everybody in the bloody Seven Kingdoms knows what happened, except for the tens of thousands who died for it.”

 

“That’s unfair, Ash. Aerys would have started a war sooner or later,” said Elia softly. “He just wanted an excuse. We all saw it and none of us did anything about it. Not until it was far too late.” She bowed her head, the mass of white-streaked dark hair sliding over her shoulders to conceal her face. “Fifteen years, and I still can’t forgive Rhaegar for not cutting his throat when he had the chance. Lyanna played her part in what happened, but surely we both know where the real blame lies.”

 

“Do we?” Ashara mused. Beside her, she could feel Elia stiffen, and took her hand. “I mean it, Elia. You yourself said it. None of us did anything about Aerys. Not even Tywin Bloody Lannister did anything about him, and he had the perfect chance in Duskendale.”

 

“I always wanted to ask Ser Barristan if he regretted what he did that day, when he rescued Aerys from the Darklyns,” murmured Elia.

 

“I think he did, for what that’s worth,” said Ashara. _He was half in love with me once. Perhaps I ought to have tried to seduce him into killing Aerys_. But Ser Barristan had reminded her too much of her brother—a man incapable of being seduced if ever one existed. _And if I’d failed, he might have felt duty-bound to tell the king, and I’d have burned with Brandon and the rest_. “Perhaps we are all to blame, one way or the other.”

 

“You’re not wrong about Lyanna, Ash. Something happens to her when she speaks of these things—the same look Rhaegar used to get. I thought it was just Targaryens who had that strangeness in their heads, but it seems Starks have it too.”

 

“Just remember, when she tries to tell you about endless winters, that we’ve had the longest summer in living memory.”

 

“That’s what I told her,” replied Elia with a wry smile that faded too quickly for Ashara’s liking. “And I don’t want to believe her, but she’s frightened of it, Ash, and you know what it takes to frighten her.”

 

Lyanna Stark had stood her ground against the Mountain that Rides, a monster of a man whose cruelty had been rumoured for years before it became known. He had even been knighted by Rhaegar Targaryen as a favour to his liege lord Tywin Lannister. _The great golden spider at the centre of a web of blood_. Ashara had even lit a candle to the Seven on the day word of the lord of Casterly Rock’s death arrived in Sunspear—the first time she had entered a sept since King Aerys murdered Brandon Stark. _If there were gods, one of them would have struck him down for his cruelty. Instead it was a man—nay, a_ boy _—who took that sin upon himself_. And that boy was now lord of the Westerlands, unimaginably wealthy and powerful. _Perhaps there is some justice after all_.

 

“Lyanna rides north once we arrive in King’s Landing. To the Wall, maybe even beyond it,” added the princess with a shudder. “The gods forbid.”

 

“Will she stop in Winterfell?” Ashara asked as casually as she could, ignoring the stab of guilt in the depths of her gut. “No, don’t even answer that. Of course she will.”

 

“Ash—”

 

“She needs to be more _careful_ ,” muttered Ashara. “If she wanted to dote on him, she ought to have told him the truth before he left Dorne. Given him time to come to terms with it while Daenerys and Aegon were still there to listen.”

 

She suspected, rather than saw, Elia’s look of surprise. “I’m not _completely_ blind to children, my lady. Just very bad at translating what I notice into anything useful.”

 

“You’ve done as well as could be expected, and you know how grateful we are.” Elia put one arm around Ashara’s shoulders and hugged her. “And you’re right. I told Lyanna as much before she took him north, but she didn’t want to burden him with a secret before sending him off to a strange new place. Since of course he couldn’t tell Lord Stark.”

 

Ashara glanced at her. “Are you sure about that?” When Elia said nothing, she continued. “It’s been fifteen years. Robert has two heirs—”

 

“One heir, Ash. And so many bastards, I hear. Half a dozen at least. Is he competing with Aegon the Unworthy?” Elia shook her head, visibly disgusted. “If she were anything other than the golden bitch she is, I might pity Cersei Lannister.”

 

“You’re changing the subject, my lady,” Ashara informed her primly.

 

“I had to try.” Elia sighed. “That’s all. I told Lyanna she ought to tell Brandon the truth, but she decided not to.”

 

“If she doesn’t tell him before he comes of age, Elia, you know I will. Whatever my failures as the woman he believes is his mother, I’ve always said he ought to have been told the truth long ere this.”

 

“I agree, Ash, but Lyanna still fears what Robert might do if he learned the truth.” Elia looked down at her left hand—at the two rings encircling her fourth finger. The heavier of the two had a pattern of dragon scales and a large ruby, etched with a three-headed dragon and the other was smaller, of palest silver, patterned with wolves and suns. “I daresay she knows him better than I ever did.”

 

“My lady,” said Ashara. She waited until Elia looked up at her before continuing, “What of Prince Aegon?”

 

“What of him?”

 

“If Robert still hates your late husband so much that Lyanna fears for Brandon’s safety…” Ashara stopped for a moment to rearrange her thoughts. “We both know how much Aegon resembles his father.” Perhaps not as much on a fourth or fifth glance, as she well knew, but King Robert didn’t seem like the sort of man who looked closely enough to tell the difference between a blameless boy and a rival’s ghost.

 

“Less so after a month on horseback in high summer. That much he gets from me.” Elia’s fingers tightened on Ashara’s hand. “I don’t have a _choice_ , Ash. If I did, I would hide them in the Water Gardens forever.”

 

“No, you wouldn’t,” Ashara replied softly. “You want Rhaenys to be queen. I don’t blame you, my lady; it is her birthright. And, as you said,” she added, “the king has given us no choice in this. But I swear to you, Arthur and I will protect you. All of you. From whatever comes.”

 

Tears glimmered in Elia’s eyes. “Ash, I don’t deserve—”

 

Ashara placed one hand on her mouth. “Don’t start that, now. You know how the Tyrells are. One whiff of weakness and they’ll rip you apart. As far as they’re concerned, you are mother to the future queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and don’t you let them forget that.”

 

“Lest I face _your_ wrath,” Elia finished, resting her head on Ashara’s shoulder for a moment. “I suppose I ought to enjoy the famous hospitality of the Reach. They certainly boast about it enough.”

 

Ashara snorted. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

 

“Oberyn speaks highly of the eldest Tyrell boy. Says he’s not like the rest of them. Perhaps that is a good sign. Our children are wiser than we are.”

 

“Let us damn well hope so.”

 

***

 

It was another week before the great castle of Highgarden came into view beyond what seemed like miles of farmland. Even Ashara couldn’t help but stare, at first. The white walls glimmered against the summer-blue sky, and she could even see the gardens for which the castle was named peppering the walls.

 

“I suppose this explains the Tyrells and their obsession with roses,” she muttered. “So much water here, so much greenery.” Even in the Water Gardens, plants had to be coaxed into growing by Prince Doran’s army of gardeners.

 

Princess Rhaenys, much to her mother’s dismay, was insisting on carrying the quartered Martell-Targaryen standard herself, at the head of their party, when they rode into Highgarden later that afternoon.

 

“She’ll be a target for anyone and everyone,” Elia sighed.

 

“She will look marvellous to her future subjects,” murmured Ashara in her lady’s ear, “Let her do it.”

 

Elia gave her a long look.

 

“Someone I know,” pronounced Ashara, doing her best not to grin, “once rode all over King’s Landing in an open carriage to show off to the roaring crowds and contracted a chill the week before her wedding. Do I need to tell that Martell’s daughter what her mother did?”

 

Elia’s look turned into a grimace. “Fine. But I want Ser Arthur or Lyanna with her at all times. No questions.”

 

“She knows you better than to ask,” replied Ashara. “But I’ll remind her all the same.”

 

“Tell her she needs to dress properly if she’s going to be parading herself before the flower of the Reach,” Elia added. “I won’t have Olenna Tyrell sneering at us.”

 

“Oh, the twins have her well in hand.” Ashara squeezed her shoulder. “Speaking of, have you seen your gown for the opening banquet?”

 

“I wouldn’t have dared. If it’s anything like the twins’ other creations, it would be nigh impossible to pack again.”

 

Nymeria Sand had been the first to stun the court at Sunspear with one of the Fowler twins’ gowns three years earlier—a nearly transparent layer of golden Myrish lace shot through with gold chains and just enough embroidery to glance at modesty whilst ignoring it altogether. Her half-sister Tyene immediately sought them out, as did Prince Doran’s eldest, Princess Arianne, who did whatever Tyene did, only more.

 

Even Prince Doran’s wife, the Lady Mellario of Norvos, had deigned to commission a gown from them for Princess Arianne’s nineteenth name-day, and the results had been spectacular—deep, coppery silk and a spiked Norvoshi-style headdress that added more than a handspan to her tiny frame. She had never worn it again, so far as Ashara knew, but Lady Mellario had always been a peculiar woman who kept to her own ways, even after nearly twenty years in Sunspear.

 

Princess Elia had engaged them to outfit all the women of the royal party and they had spent the past year working furiously. Ashara had seen the sketches, but the clothing itself had been carefully packed in trunks of cedar wood for the long journey, and the twins had brought a small army of seamstresses to finish them out.

 

Even Elia caught her breath at the sight of her daughter. Beneath a close-fitting black leather riding jerkin—far too heavy for the Dornish desert but more practical in the Reach—her long sandsilk sleeves and skirts of slashed black-and-red caught the breeze. She wore a silken cloak of Martell orange pinned with a pair of golden sun brooches at her shoulders, and her hair was swept into a black scarf against the dust of the Roseroad. Beneath her, a black Dornish mare danced impatiently, tossing her mane so the golden bells woven through it jingled.

 

As the procession moved closer to Highgarden, Ashara could see a line of green-clad horsemen waiting outside the castle gates. Arthur and Lyanna Stark nudged their mounts forward to flank Princess Rhaenys as she held the banner aloft, and Ashara too crept forward, well aware that Elia, who sat in an open carriage some distance behind, would demand a full account of exactly what her daughter did.

 

When they were within shouting distance of the Tyrell guard, however, Rhaenys dug her heels into her horse’s sides and the mare sprang forward. The line of guards wavered, save for the man at the very centre, who held up his hand.

 

Arthur and Lyanna were scrambling to catch up even as Rhaenys wheeled her mare to a halt a bare few feet from the Tyrell commander, swept off her headscarf, and inclined her head to him. Whatever she said, Ashara could not hear, but as she drew close enough to see himbetter, she noted the quality of his doublet and the gold trappings of his horse. _One of Lord Tyrell’s sons, I’d wager_. He had several, including the young man to whom Prince Oberyn intended to sell several of his finer horses. That was the eldest, and the young man before her looked to be at least twenty, not unhandsome, with curly brown hair and the air of a confident horseman. _Perhaps this is Prince Oberyn’s protegé_.

 

He was also staring at Rhaenys as though someone had dropped a brick on his head. _Interesting_. But there was little time to contemplate that as the gates to Highgarden opened and an older couple who Ashara could only assume—having never properly met them before—were Lord and Lady Tyrell rode forth with a host of green-clad attendants.

 

_So it begins_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In canon, Ashara Dayne is best known for having thrown herself from the highest tower of Starfall at the end of Robert’s Rebellion, shortly after Eddard Stark delivers the news of her brother Arthur’s death at the Tower of Joy. My theory at least is that Ashara kills herself not because of a man (be he Brandon or Ned Stark) or because of a stillbirth (whether or not that happened), but because she had lost everything and everyone she loved in Robert’s Rebellion. Since the sack of King’s Landing does not happen in this universe, Ashara survives and remains an integral part of Elia and Lyanna’s household after the war.
> 
> A number of comments have asked why Lyanna insists on keeping up the pretense that Brandon is Ashara’s son and not acknowledging him. I hope I’ve at least started to answer that question in this chapter, but it will also become clearer in time why Lyanna made the choice she did.


End file.
